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John Calipari’s seat is very hot after yet another disappointing season | College Basketball Enquirer

Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde and Ross Dellenger discuss the lack of success for ‘Blue Blood’ programs in the NCAA Tournament, and take about John Calipari’s job security at Kentucky.

Video transcript

PAT FORDE: People would be perfectly happy if John Calipari found some other place to work at any point in time between now and the start of next season.

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DAN WETZEL: This has not been a tournament for Blue Bloods

PAT FORDE: Nope.

DAN WETZEL: So Sparty won it in 2000. That's a long time ago. The only other team still alive that won a National Championship this century is UConn, which obviously won four of them and have now resuscitated their program under Dan Hurley and getting back to the big east.

And boy, they're good. They could win a fifth. They're one of the few that I think could beat Alabama. But Duke's gone. Kansas is gone. Obviously they had just a huge shakeup with Bill Self getting sick and we hope he's doing as well as possible.

I think you pointed out, like I'm almost glad he didn't coach. I don't know. Why-- it's just that was tough. I don't know what to make of Kansas. But Duke's gone. Kentucky, their final four drought is now eight years, seven tourneys. And that was-- they just got beat. It was a good game against K-State but that team's a mess. So it's not easy just being-- that little conference or that champions tournament they have at the beginning of the year, they might need to rename that sucker. Invite some new teams.

PAT FORDE: No kidding. Right? Yeah, three of the four of them are gone. Kentucky. Not good. Not good.

DAN WETZEL: I mean, I just I watching that game what I was struck by is other than Oscar Tshiebwe, I thought K-State might have had the next three best players.

PAT FORDE: Maybe so. You know--

DAN WETZEL: These transfers that Kentucky got, they're older. That was the theory. They're not that good. Like Keyontae Johnson, Markquis Nowell, those guys were much better than what Kentucky was trotting out there. This is a really strong team K-State had and they just were a better team.

PAT FORDE: Yeah. Yeah. Kentucky, like Carson Wallace played really well. And he'll go be a top 10 pick probably as a freshman. That's more the classic Cal player. But Oscar Tshiebwe is now going to leave and they're going to bring in-- next year's team will look more like the Cal teams from 2010 to 2015, '16, '17, whatever, where it's going to be five wildly talented freshmen out there and we'll see who else kind of fills in the cracks.

But look, people in Kentucky are tired of it. They're tired of the Cal experience because the returns, as you indicated, are diminishing. They haven't been there. They're 2 and 5 in their last three postseasons. That counts SEC tournament and NCAA tournament.

They haven't been to a Sweet 16-- they haven't played in an SEC tournament championship game since what was it, 2018 or something? 2019? And they haven't played in the Sweet 16 since 2019. So there's just-- there's not a lot there. There's a lot of money being spent. There's a lot of bluster. There's a lot of recruiting talk and buzz, but there's not enough on court success for people to say, yeah, we think Cal's still the guy.

That he can bring us banner number nine. They've been talking about banner number nine since 2012. Hadn't happened.

ROSS DELLENGER: But what happens? Is it is it a situation where, I know you've written about it before, is it like a Jimbo Fisher, right, kind of contract that they're kind of stuck in?

PAT FORDE: Yep. That's right. And he'll get one more year because they've got-- they're bringing in this ridiculous recruiting class. But I mean, people would be perfectly happy if John Calipari found some other place to work at any point in time between now and the start of next season.